ON LANGUAGE

ON LANGUAGE; Like, Uptalk?

By James Gorman;

Published: August 15, 1993

I used to speak in a regular voice. I was able to assert, demand, question. Then I started teaching. At a university? And my students had this rising intonation thing? It was particularly noticeable on telephone messages. "Hello? Professor Gorman? This is Albert? From feature writing?"

I had no idea that a change in the "intonation contour" of a sentence, as linguists put it, could be as contagious as the common cold. But before long I noticed a Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation in my own speech. I first heard it when I myself was leaving a message. "This is Jim Gorman? I'm doing an article on Klingon? The language? From 'Star Trek'?" I realized then that I was unwittingly, unwillingly speaking uptalk.

I was, like, appalled?

Rising intonations at the end of a sentence or phrase are not new. In many languages, a "phrase final rise" indicates a question. Some Irish, English and Southern American dialects use rises all the time. Their use at the end of a declarative statement may date back in America to the 17th century.

Nonetheless, we are seeing, well, hearing, something different. Uptalk, under various names, has been noted on this newspaper's Op-Ed page and on National Public Radio. Cynthia McLemore, a University of Pennsylvania linguist who knows as much about uptalk as anyone, says the frequency and repetition of rises mark a new phenomenon. And although uptalk has been most common among teen-agers, in particular young women, it seems to be spreading. Says McLemore, "What's going on now in America looks like a dialect shift." In other words, what is happening may be a basic change in the way Americans talk.

Nobody knows exactly where uptalk came from. It might have come from California, from Valley Girl talk. It may be an upper-middle-class thing, probably starting with adolescents. But everybody has an idea about what uptalk means. Some twentysomethings say uptalk is part of their attitude: cool, ironic, uncommitted.

I myself was convinced that uptalk was tentative, testing, oversensitive; not feminine so much as wimpy, detumescent. Imagine how it would sound in certain cocksure, authoritative occupations, like police work: You're under arrest? You have some rights? Or surgery: So, first I'll open up your chest?

I also thought how some of the great dead white males of the much maligned canon might sound, reintoned: It was really dark? Like, on the deep? The face of the deep? Or: Hi, I'm Ishmael? I'll be your narrator? Or: A horse? A horse? My kingdom for a horse?

My speculations have some support; there are linguists who see uptalk as being about uncertainty and deference to the listener. But McLemore scoffs at these ideas. People tend to hear what they want to hear, she says. One can, for instance, take a speech pattern common among women and link it to a stereotype of women. (Uncertain? Deferential?)

Deborah Tannen -- a linguist at Georgetown, who, with her book "You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation," may have overtaken Noam Chomsky and become the best-known linguist in America -- contends that broad theorizing about uptalk is downright foolish. Speech patterns are contagious, she says, and they spread the way fads do. "There's a fundamental human impulse to imitate what we hear," she says. "Teen-agers talk this way because other teen-agers talk this way and they want to sound like their peers."

That doesn't mean rises have no function. They can be used as a signal that "more is coming," says Mark Aronoff of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. An adolescent might be signaling "I have more to say; don't interrupt me." McLemore says an early study of telephone conversation suggested that rises may be used as a probe of sorts, to see if the hearer is getting what you are saying.

A friend of mine (of no formal linguistic expertise) likes this latter interpretation. He insists that the spread of uptalk indicates the lack of shared knowledge in our society. Our society, he contends, has become so fragmented that no one knows anymore whether another person will have a clue as to what he's saying. We need to test the hearer's level of understanding.

Like, suppose I want to talk about Sabicas? Or Charles Barkley? Or nitric oxide? The molecule of the year? For 1992?

By using the questioning tone, I'm trying to see if my conversational partner knows anything at all about flamenco guitar, professional basketball or neurochemistry.

McLemore studied intonation in one very particular context. She observed uses of intonation in a Texas sorority, where uptalk was not at all about uncertainty or deference. It was used most commonly by the leaders, the senior officers. Uptalk was a kind of accent, or tag, to highlight new information for listeners: "We're having a bake sale? On the west mall? On Sunday?" When saying something like "Everyone should know that your dues should be in," they used a falling intonation at the end of the sentence.

The sorority members' own interpretation of uptalk was that it was a way of being inclusive. McLemore's conclusions are somewhat similar. She says the rises are used to connect phrases, and to connect the speaker to the listener, as a means of "getting the other person involved."

Since McLemore did her study, people are constantly calling to her attention other uses of uptalk. It seems to be a common speech pattern in Toronto, where, she says, a radio show called "Ask the Pastors" displays uptalk in spades. She also found that on another radio show the Mayor of Austin, Tex., used rises to mark items in a list. Asked to explain why he should maintain bike paths, he said things like: Austin has a good climate? It's good for bike riding? McLemore also observed a second-grade teacher who used rises freely for commands and statements. "Jason? Back to your chair? Thank you?"

I confess to ambivalence about uptalk. When I use it, I judge it to mark a character flaw. On the other hand, there are some ritual utterances that could clearly benefit from a change in pitch contour.

Mea culpa? Mea culpa? Mea maxima culpa?

Or, to reflect the true state of matrimony in our society:

I do?

I do not, however, want the speech pattern to spread to airplane pilots. I don't want to hear: This is Captain McCormick? Your pilot? We'll be flying to Denver? Our cruising altitude will be, like, 30,000 feet?

McLemore, however, says it seems possible that we will be hearing such an intonation among pilots in the future. After all, it looks as if pilots are getting younger every year. Once commercial airline pilots start using uptalk, McLemore notes, it will mean that a full-blown dialect shift has occurred. Uptalk won't be uptalk anymore. It will be, like, American English?

Drawing

James Gorman teaches journalism at New York University? William Safire is on vacation.